HOROWITZ, SCHMELKE (Schmuelche, pet name for "Samuel"):

Rabbi and cabalist; born in Poland 1726; died at Nikolsburg April 28, 1778; son of Hirsch Horowitz, rabbi of Czortkow, and brother of Phinehas Horowitz of Frankfort-on-the-Main. A disciple of Bär of Meseritz, he was a devotee of the Cabala; and this brought him the reputation of a saint, to which he owed his call to Nikolsburg in 1773, after he had been rabbi of Ryczywol (Ritschenwalde) in Poland. In 1775 he was appointed chief rabbi of the province of Moravia. Horowitz's fame as a saint increased; and his arrival was supposed to have broken a long spell of drought. In Nikolsburg he established for those observing the Ḥasidic rite a synagogue ("Chasidimschul") which existed to the end of the nineteenth century. His cabalistic homilies on the Pentateuch were published under the title "Dibre Shemu'el" (Lemberg, c. 1870).